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Abortion on Second Thought

I was a teenager and young adult in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before Roe v. Wade made legal abortions widely available in the United States. But if the occasion had arisen, and if it could have been managed safely, I would have aborted an illegitimate baby without a second thought. . . . . Continue Reading »

A Protestant Shtetl

Just east of Chattanooga, four miles north of the Georgia state line and six miles up the road from where the Andrews raiders abandoned The General following their famous Civil War railroad hijacking, lies the village of Collegedale. Nestled in a valley alongside the Appalachian ridge known as White . . . . Continue Reading »

A Rabbi’s Christmas

In order not to raise false hopes in the hearts of those who still have the expectation that one day all Jews will convert to Christianity, it might be best to begin with a few disclaimers. The writer of this article does not believe in the Trinity. He does not believe that Jesus . . . . Continue Reading »

The Feminist Revelation

That is the title of an important article in Social Philosophy & Policy (Vol. VIII, No. 1) by Christina Sommers, Professor of Philosophy at Clark University. The burgeoning academic industry of feminist/womanist studies is rife with declarations of a grand social revolution. Contemporary . . . . Continue Reading »

In A Field Of Weeds

“Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” —Pascal, Pensées Five degrees. Rough, shifting winds. Sunlight crashing Almost audibly, sky to snow-pack, snow-pack to sky. Eyes shrink hard to their smallest stop, but winter drills in. Brilliant splinters of ice in . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

On the Third Dayby Piers Paul ReadRandom House, 259 pages, $20 You can’t fault novelist Piers Paul Read for raising some intriguing questions around a fascinating pair of archeological conceits: What would happen if a skeleton bearing the marks of torture and crucifixion associated with . . . . Continue Reading »

The Personal Niebuhr

Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold and Ursula NiebuhrEdited by Ursula M. NiebuhrHarperCollins, 432 pages, $29.95 In a perverse way, we have Richard W. Fox to thank for this most interesting volume of letters of the late Reinhold Niebuhr and illustrious correspondents. . . . . Continue Reading »

November Letters

Defending Atheists I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as I read Richard John Neuhaus’ contentious article, “Can Atheists Be Good Citizens?” (August/September) I hope that this is not the opening salvo by neoconservatives to deny nonbelievers their legitimate rights as citizens. To maintain that . . . . Continue Reading »

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